


At Her Majesty's Pleasure

by angelsaves



Category: Kushiel's Legacy - Jacqueline Carey
Genre: F/F, Foot Massage, Podfic Welcome, Pregnancy, Pregnant Sex, Scratching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-18
Updated: 2017-10-18
Packaged: 2019-01-19 04:57:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12403623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelsaves/pseuds/angelsaves
Summary: In which Phèdre serves her queen, and they both have some curiosity satisfied.





	At Her Majesty's Pleasure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VSSAKJ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VSSAKJ/gifts).



> This is a Yuletide Treat! Happy time of year!

There are some tales of my life that I never committed to writing, that hold secrets not mine to tell. Even Joscelin only ever heard the barest bones of these; he, more than perhaps anyone else, knows what it is to be relied upon by one’s sovereign.

So it was in the late winter of Ysandre’s first pregnancy that she relied upon me. The queen was great with child, as majestic in her bulk as a ship under sail. I could see, however, that it was taking a toll on her, faint lines of strain etched between her fine brows and a pained grace in her gait.

“Your maj- Ysandre,” I said, catching her by the elbow. “Mayhap you would allow me to rub your feet, in your chambers?”

The longing on Ysandre’s face was nearly palpable. “I shouldn’t —“ she started to say.

“You are the queen,” I reminded her. “Surely no one at this fête would wish you any discomfort.”

“Hmm.” Thoughts flickered across her face, and I saw her come to a decision. “Very well. Come to my chambers in a quarter of an hour.”

As Ysandre swept across the hall, making her excuses, I amused myself with a glass of very good cordial, letting the flavor roll across my tongue and watching the ebb and flow of courtiers around Ysandre’s path. She exited, and I waited the appointed quarter of an hour before making my own farewells and following her.

Ysandre’s guard ushered me into her chambers, where I found my queen seated on a couch in a silken dressing-gown, feet bare, revealing feet so swollen that there were creases where the toes met the tops, propped on a stool. I drew in a breath.

“I know,” she said. “I won’t be able to get my slippers on again for a few hours, at least, until the swelling reduces.”

I knelt beside the stool, where a servant had thoughtfully left a jar of scented oil. “Let me do what I can,” I said. I poured some oil into my palm to warm, then stroked up the underside of Ysandre’s right foot, getting it slick before I began to rub in earnest.

The groan Ysandre let out told me just how much pain she had been hiding, as clearly as the texture of her foot did. “Yes, right there, Phèdre,” she said.

I acquiesced, focusing the pads of my thumbs just beneath the arch, and she sighed with pleasure. Back and forth, I alternated between her feet, easing the soreness in each one, until at last she drew back and regarded me where I knelt, _abeyante_.

“It’s true, what they say,” my queen said to me. “You do look surpassingly lovely on your knees.”

“Ah,” I said, and smiled. “Thank you, your majesty.”

She waved one hand impatiently. “Don’t call me that — not now, of all the times!”

“You wouldn’t be the first patron I had called so,” I said, allowing a note of teasing to creep into my voice.

As I had hoped, Ysandre chuckled. “Is that what I would be? A patron?”

“That would make it simple,” I told her. “Surely a priest could be found — but few things can be simple between us, Ysandre.”

“That is so,” she agreed.

“A lover, then? Or a friend?” I suggested.

“I have heard tales of the friendships the common folk have,” Ysandre said dryly. “I believe that would suffice. Merely loving friends, satisfying a certain... hmm, mutual curiosity?”

“That would suit me,” I said, stoppering the jar of oil and setting it aside. “Will you tell me of your curiosity, Ysandre?”

She smiled, cool and precise. “One hears certain things, even when one is the queen. That you are beautiful on your knees is one such; that you are near as accomplished as Naamah herself in the arts of the bedchamber is another. As well...” She shifted her weight. “As well, I find myself curious about the sharper pleasures.”

“As I have long been curious about the streak of Kusheline fire they say runs in the veins of House L’Envers,” I confessed. The banked heat between us rose a few notches as I gazed into her violet eyes, knowing that she gazed in turn at the scarlet mote in mine.

“I have seen showings by near all of the Thirteen Houses of the Night Court,” Ysandre said. “I’m not entirely ignorant of that aspect of my heritage. Inexperienced, to be sure, but not ignorant.”

“I had suspected you might do so, once you were wed,” I said. “Drustan did not take it amiss?”

“Oh, no.” Ysandre smiled, a private thing. “He found himself most intrigued by several of the acts demonstrated. Do you know, he had never heard of the _languisement?_ I had thought perhaps he would not find it fitting, but he was quite taken with the practice.” She glanced down at me, lashes lowered. “As was I.”

“Shall I take that as an invitation, my... Ysandre?” I asked, rising from my haunches and letting my hands hover over Ysandre’s thighs, knowing that she could feel the heat of them through the silk of her dressing-gown.

“Yes, do,” Ysandre said, allowing her thighs to part. I opened her dressing-gown, shimmering violet like her eyes, and breathed in the scent of her. 

It had been a long time since I had been called upon to pleasure a woman thus great with child, but I hadn’t lost the knack, caressing the magnificence of her belly to reassure her that this, too, was part of her beauty, then parting her nether lips with my tongue and seeking out Naamah’s pearl.

My queen sighed and moaned above me, arching her hips up off the couch to press her treasure into my face. In this, she was like any other patron of mine, chasing her pleasure, and I loved her all the more for it.

I could feel the waves of pleasure approaching Ysandre’s climax, and had redoubled my efforts, when suddenly one of her hands clenched into a fist in my hair, yanking me backwards. I gasped, Kushiel’s red haze momentarily obscuring my vision, and looked up at my queen.

“Not yet,” Ysandre said. I cocked my head at her, sweet pain from my caught hair coursing through me, and waited. She gazed at me, at my dart-stricken eye, for long moments, and then said, “Undress. I want to see what I’m doing.” She released her grip.

Curious, but willing to wait for as long as Ysandre wished me to, I unlaced my gown, letting it fall and pool around me.

“Turn,” she said. “I wish to see your marque again.”

I did so, awkwardly, still on my knees, and posed to display it as best I could. Ysandre leaned forward and traced the lineaments with one fingertip, lightly enough to make me tremble.

“The last time I touched you so, it hurt,” Ysandre said, in a reminiscing tone.

“I remember.” I did, exquisitely.

“Could I make it hurt again?” she asked. “With my nails, perhaps, in emulation of Naamah?”

I trembled harder, with anticipation now. “As you wish,” I said.

“Good.” With that, Ysandre raked her nails down nearly the full length of my marque, setting me alight. I cried out, and Ysandre laughed warmly. “Oh, I like that,” she said, and did it again, the scratched lines crossing each other in sparks of brighter pain. She did it again, and again.

“Ah, Elua!” It was growing brighter in the room, I could swear, as though Elua himself were taking joy in this assignation. I could believe it; his scion had been sorely in need of joy herself.

When she was satisfied with my cries and gasps, my back aflame, Ysandre grabbed my hair again, turning me to face her. “Now finish,” she said, spreading her thighs, glistening with even more of her juices than when I had left off.

I worshipped Naamah’s swollen pearl, then, with lips and tongue, and Ysandre came to her climax with a sigh of relief, going boneless beneath my hands.

“Phèdre, you are all that they say and more,” Ysandre said, caressing my disarrayed hair and attempting to restore it to some semblance of order. “I thank you.”

“It was my great pleasure to serve you,” I told her, in earnest. “I will not forget this evening soon.”

“No, I expect you won’t,” Ysandre said. “Nor will I. Do you need help dressing? Shall I call for a maid?”

“No need.” I laced my gown expertly, then finger-combed my tresses and twined them into a lover’s-haste knot. “Near-cousin, I fear it is late, and I must take my leave.”

“Go,” Ysandre said, “you have my permission.”

I rose and gave her the kiss of parting. “May Elua and his Companions bless and keep you and the babe.”

I heal swift and clean, but I bore the marks of Queen Ysandre’s pleasure for many days.


End file.
